30. Will
THIRTY
WILL
The moment Blake steps into our hotel suite, I consider throwing something heavy at him.
Instead, I cross my arms and stare him down until he says something.
Ari and Naz are with Jesse in his room. Both of them are as upset as I am, but they’ve always been able to keep their heads better than I have.
Ari focuses all his energy into helping try to make things better, while Naz’s anger tends to simmer rather than explode like mine does.
“Well?” I demand, impatient to hear that they were wrong and we were right. Sending Jesse to do all those interviews after his privacy was violated and he’s still so raw from losing the man he thought was the love of his life was the stupidest fucking move they could have made.
“Looks like we’re going to be heading home for a while,” Blake says, raking his hair back with his fingers. “The rest of Jesse’s interviews and appearances have been cancelled or rescheduled, and I think you could all use the downtime.”
“You think?” I snap, seething. “I knew the interviews were a bad idea. I said that—you remember me saying that, right?”
Blake, to his credit, looks rather chastised. “Yes, I remember. And I didn’t disagree with you, but the label thought?—”
“I don’t want to hear what the label thinks or wants. They don’t control us. Isn’t that what you said? They work for us, not the other way around. We are supposed to have the decision-making powers.”
A huff of air expels from Blake, and I can’t tell if he’s pissed or tired or both. I’m not sure I care. “And you do, for the most part. But the PR team has the most experience dealing with controversy.”
“And yet they thought it was a good idea to throw a grieving man in front of a shit-stirring troll like Zach Lawson? By himself?” I scoff. “How fucking stupid can you get?! This whole PR stunt to clean up his image was bullshit in the first place.”
“I know.”
“It was bad enough to force him to get up there and talk about himself as if he’s some kind of broken thing in need of fixing, to be pitied and excused from bad behavior when he didn’t do anything wrong.
He was the one who was violated, even you said as much.
But to agree to an interview with someone that is known to throw rules and basic decorum out the window! ”
“I told them I didn’t think Keep It Real was a good idea?—”
“Then where the fuck were you?!” I’m shouting now, anger pulsing through me. “Why didn’t you stop it? The moment Lawson went off script, why didn’t you pull him out of there and tell every last one of them to get fucked?!”
“I didn’t?—”
I interrupt him again, aiming low because I want him to feel as shitty as Jesse does right now. “Let me guess, the intern was cute and nerdy and half your age, so you were distracted?”
“That’s a baseless accusation, and you know it.”
“Do I?”
Blake takes a heavy breath. “The producer asked me to approve some questions that were being called in. I thought it was odd that he pulled me away from the booth to do it, but I didn’t go with my gut. I was gone for maybe a minute before I heard Jesse raise his voice, but the door was locked.
“You know you just played right into their hands, right? All this did is make Jesse look exactly as unhinged as they want him to seem.”
“I know,” he concedes. “I shouldn’t have stepped away. I think it was intentional on the producer’s part, a set up or something. I should have seen it coming. I know I shouldn’t have stepped away.”
His defeated admission has me stepping back to take another look at our manager.
He’s significantly less put together than normal.
His hair is disheveled. He’s not wearing his suit jacket, and his shirt is rumpled and unbuttoned at the neck.
His sleeves are pushed up his forearms. Blake has tattoos?
I shake my head and pull my eyes away from the tendrils of ink peeking from under the fabric of his shirt sleeves. I’m not letting him off that easy.
“What’s worse is the way Jesse looked when he came back. He was already struggling, but I don’t know how he’s going to come back from this. You let that happen to him, Blake.”
“You’re right,” Blake says. “And I’m sorry.
I promised to protect you all better than Francis did, and I failed Jesse today.
It won’t happen again. I told the label that Jesse isn’t doing any more interviews for the foreseeable future, and I let them know my concerns about performing on New Years Eve.
I have them on standby to cancel, no matter how much it costs any of us.
Jesse’s the one who wants to keep it on the books for now, but that was before today.
I’ll talk to him about it when he’s ready, but he understandably doesn’t want to talk to me right now. ”
“You’re not the only one,” Ari says, walking out of the hallway that leads to the bedrooms. “He’s not in the mood to talk to anyone, just says he wants to go home. How quickly can we have a plane ready?”
Blake looks down at his phone. “Probably within an hour. I already called to set it up.”
“Good.” Ari looks from Blake to me. “You should probably pack up.”
“Pfft. You know I don’t unpack the way most of you do. I just pull my shit straight out of my duffle.”
“Yeah, but you have more hair products than I do and leave your dirty laundry everywhere.”
“You’re one to talk,” I say, letting him lead me out of the living room and away from Blake.
There’s nothing more I can say to him anyway.
I like Blake. He’s a good person and he’s been a good manager, but he fucked up big time with this one. He failed Jesse, and didn’t protect him the way he should have—not from Zach Lawson, and not from our own label when they wanted to push these interviews.
When Ari leaves me to grab the rest of his things, I pull my phone from my pocket and stare down at the string of texts. There are new unread messages at the bottom.
Unknown Number: I can only imagine what Zach Lawson could do with the material I’m sitting on.
Unknown Number: You gonna flip when he asks you when you started perving on your little brother?
My hand clenches around the phone so hard I feel the case creak.
What the fuck is Blake and our idiotic PR team going to do when Don sells his story to the highest bidder? Even if none of it were true at all, a story like that could be twisted into something that follows us for the rest of our lives. How are they going to be able to protect Ari?
They’re not.
Because I’m going to make damn sure Don doesn’t get the chance.
Me: I’m headed back to Raleigh. Let’s meet and discuss your terms.
As soon as we touch down in Raleigh, Jesse makes himself scarce.
The only way we even know he’s still alive is through his mom.
She let us know that Cory and Tad brought him home, and that they’ve stationed themselves outside her condo since their location was leaked and there were news vans camped outside the property line.
Ari decided to go over and see if he’d have any luck today, so I’m taking my chance to sneak away while I can.
Zane drives me—I’m not that stupid—but he promises to stay in the car unless I specifically call for him.
I can take a hit if it comes to that, but I don’t think it will.
Don is an idiot, but the one thing he has going for him is his instinct for self-preservation.
When we pull up across the street from the house Ari and I grew up in, the first thing I notice is how much smaller it seems than I remember.
Maybe that’s a side effect from years of living in condos and hotel suites with more square footage than this little house, or maybe it’s that I no longer feel as small as I did when I lived here.
I stood up to Don when I needed to, and I shielded Ari, but I was just a kid then, too.
I lived constantly on edge, constantly ready for anything to happen.
Whether it be a drunken tantrum from Don, a nightmare from Ari, or someone to come and take me away again to move me somewhere nobody wanted me.
It took more of a toll on me than I ever realized.
It made me feel small, even if I was pretending to be big and tough.
Like an animal that puffs out its feathers or fur to look bigger than it really is.
Crossing the road, I slowly look over the property.
It wasn’t great when we were growing up here, but it’s basically dilapidated now.
The siding is warped and peeling, the porch sags so much it looks like it could collapse at any moment, and there’s something growing along the bottom edge of the railing.
The yard is mostly dirt now, with patches of dead grass clinging to the edges.
The front door creaks, and for a moment, I’m transported back in time. For a moment, I’m eight again, expecting to hear Ari crying, or find him hiding in the overgrown bushes on the other side of the carport.
Don steps out like he’s been waiting for this his entire life, smiling smugly in an old, stained hoodie from his high school football team, the logo cracked and half worn off.
It’s stretched tight across his beer gut, which has grown since I saw him last, several inches of pallid skin on display over his equally dirty-looking sweatpants.
His bare feet are shoved into a pair of unlaced sneakers that are more grey than white.
I can smell him from here, sour breath and stale cigarettes.
“Well, well, well,” he drawls. “You finally come to your senses, didja boy?” He leans against the porch railing like he owns the world, and I spend a few long, satisfying minutes imagining him falling through the warped wood or falling face first into the gravel sidewalk when the railing fails. “Come to beg, boy?”
That gets my attention, but I don’t rise to his bait.
“No, I’m not here to beg. I’m here to reason with you.”
He snorts. “Don’t know what you mean by that. But you better be finally ready to pay me what you owe me.”
“I’ve given you enough. We don’t owe you shit, and you don’t have proof of anything either, so stop with your threats,” I say evenly. “You have no proof and no credibility. No one with half a brain would believe you.”
Don’s grin stretches, slow and ugly.
“Proof?” He laughs, his husky rasp sounding more like a cough.
“You think something so little as proof matters.” He steps down from the porch.
“D’you know people think you boys are all Satan worshippers who bathe in the blood of newborns to stay rich and pretty?
That Zach Lawson guy says he believes it after meeting that druggie you call a frontman.
And there’s a whole lot of people on the internet who think it’s your name redacted on those files about the sex trafficking ring, that you’re all pedophiles.
” He shrugs. “Ain’t no proof of that, either, but they all believe it.
You really think it’d be hard to convince them that you and your brother got something going on? ”
My jaw tightens.
“Hell,” he continues, his voice lilting almost playfully. “At this point I could tell them you’re actually blood-related and they’d believe it. Wouldn’t take much to photoshop some birth certificates. Tie you both to that crazy bitch mom of Ari’s and watch you squirm.”
He laughs and steps closer, his breath wafting at me as he gets bolder. His eyes keep shifting towards the car, and I know he’s only giving me any space at all because he knows I’m not alone.
“And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.
With all this shit happening right now, I don’t need truth or proof.
People will eat this shit up because you boys are everything they’re sick of—loud, annoying snowflakes trying to push your perverted lib agenda.
This country’s done pretending that kind of shit is brave, and that means I got plenty of people willing to shell out big bucks just to see the likes of you burn. ”
He taps his temple like he thinks he’s clever. “You shoulda paid me when I asked the first time, now shouldn’t ya? Because now it’s going to cost you double. Maybe triple, seeing as you’re both millionaires or some shit.”
“And how do I know you’re not going to take my money and run to the nearest tabloid?”
Don shrugs and gives me a smarmy smile that tells me that’s exactly what he plans to do. Not that I plan on giving him another dime.
I shake my head, letting the silence sit between us for a minute. Then I reach into my jacket pocket.
“You know, Don, you always have been a piece of shit.”
“You think you’d learn some respect.”
“You think you’d learn not to keep fucking with me and Ari. You don’t get to use him to get to me anymore.”
Don’s eyes flick down at the phone in my hand. I unlock it without breaking eye contact, press stop on the recorder, rewind it some, and then hit play. His voice fills the space between us.
“…at this point I could tell them you’re actually blood-related and they’d believe it. Wouldn’t take much to photoshop some birth certificates.” I fast forward a little, then press play again. “Don’t need truth or proof. People will eat this shit up because you boys are ? —"
I stop the playback, not wanting to hear the whole thing over again. The wind rustles dead leaves across the carport, the silence notably tense. I smile at Don as I push the phone back into my pocket.
“Maybe you don’t need proof, but I’m the one who actually has it,” I say quietly.
“You think that’ll scare me? I’ll still get paid?—”
“If you ever come near me or Ari again,” I say, stepping forward until we’re nearly chest to chest. It reminds me of the times I did this even when I was a foot shorter than him, but now I tower over him.
“If you so much as speak our names to anyone, I will ruin what little you have left in this world.”
His bravado cracks just enough to see the uncertainty beneath. “You wouldn’t.”
“Try me,” I say bluntly. “I’ll come for your piece of shit car, your dilapidated shithole house, your livelihood.
I’ll take everything away from you, and I won’t stop there.
Because when you least expect it, I’ll come for you.
If you haven’t learned by now, there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for him.
If you fuck with him, I’ll come for you with everything I’ve got. ”
For a long time, we stand there, staring at each other. In the mess of the yard, in the memories that have rotted like the wood that barely holds this house up.
Finally, he looks down, and I step back.
“This is the last time you’ll ever see me if you play your cards right.”
Then I turn and walk to my waiting car without looking back. I don’t even look to see if he’s still standing there once I’m behind the tinted windows and the doors are locked. And I don’t let myself breathe until the house disappears behind us.